


Experiments

by spookyscaryskeletons (Buttons15)



Category: Adventure Time, The Last of Us
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-22 10:58:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21300929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buttons15/pseuds/spookyscaryskeletons
Summary: Bubbline/ TLOU AUMarceline and Bonnibel are survivals in the zombie apocalypse, trying to stay alive, trying to find a cure.Things would be easier if they could just join the little pockets of civilization around the world, but Marceline had a secret:She was immune.(a collection of short zombie apocalypse AU tales)
Relationships: Princess Bubblegum/Marceline
Comments: 32
Kudos: 177





	1. On how Finn lost his arm

**Author's Note:**

> special thanks to [donut](https://justdooonut.tumblr.com/) on tumblr who not only drew the wonderful picture that inspired me, but also let me write on their AU!

It was half past three in the morning, according to the last working clock Bonnibel could find.

Her last test subject was dead.

She put her pen down and sighed. She’d been hopping from lab to lab since the apocalypse went down, forced to move away when the generators shut down or they ran out of food or the place was swamped by zombies. But this one was, by far, the most promising one they’d found. She’d managed to fix the solar panels on the roof, and they’d lucked out by finding a mostly intact greenhouse.

They had a farm running, complete with potatoes and carrots and even some greens. And Finn and Jake had found half a dozen chickens in one of their supply runs, so now they had the semblance of a normal diet. It had taken them weeks to clear out the whole university facility from zombies, and though they were thorough, they still found strays every once in a while. But the results were more than worth it.

They were fed and safe. And free. It was more than she could say for most of the human population. Sighing, Bonnie tapped the glass of her ant farm. The insects scurried under the earth, active and alive and currently un-zombified. Cordyceps was hard to work with, because it infected arthropods and humans and seemingly nothing else.

She stared at her in-vitro cell cultures, where mycelium spread over glass plaques. There were dozens of them, all equally unpromising except for the last one, where not a single spore grew. A piece of tape on the corner labeled it “M”.

As if hearing her thoughts, Marceline knocked on the door, startling her out of her skin. Bonnie rubbed her eyes. “Come in.”

“Hey. It’s late.” She had a cup of something warm on her hands, and Bonnie felt a pang of gratitude. “How’s the sciency stuff going?”

Bonnie took the cup from her hands and sipped. They had limited options of drinks, and she knew for a fact that Marcy hid whatever coffee they found to save it for her. The boys were attempting to grow coffee in the greenhouse, but it was a work in progress. “I hate to ask this of you, but we might need to capture a new specimen soon.”

“You killed another one?”

Bonnie sighed. “Antifungal agents are very toxic. Here,” she tapped the second of her samples. “This is Cordyceps versus Amphotericin B. And here,” She tapped the third glass, “This is Cordyceps versus Voriconazole.”

“What’s this one?” Marceline leaned over the fourth sample, where spore growth was significantly diminished.

“Flucytosine and Amphotericin in attack dosages.”

“This is promising.”

“Yeah, if you don’t need kidneys. Or a liver. I can’t just give someone three milligrams per kilo of amphotericin and expect them to live.” Bonnie took a sip of her coffee. It was precisely as she liked it.

“Was that how you killed the last zombie?”

“Yes. The infection subsided a little, but he – it – it died after the second dose. I don’t expect any cure for these people, Marcy, they’re too far gone that even if I could kill the fungus, they’d have little actual brain left. But I just hoped… that maybe we could stop the early stages, you know? Prevent it, at least.”

Marceline nodded, eyes still roaming curiously over her experiments. She stopped by the last agar recipient. “Have you… have you figured out what is wrong with me?”

Her heart clenched. “In a way. It’s anti-ergosterol antibodies combined with a slightly mutated sterol esterase.”

“What?”

Bonnie finished her drink and put the glass down, right next to the experiments. She considered moving it, but then told herself that great advances in medicine had happened because scientists ate inside their labs. “Our cell membrane and the fungus’ are similar enough that any sort of immune response or drug harms both of us. But yours is mutated, just a little. Just enough that your body can build up a response against the fungus without it being suicide.”

“Oh.”

“It’s fascinating, but I don’t think it’s replicable, save for with gene therapy. And I just don’t have the structure for that kind of experiment. So back to anti-fungals it is.”

“Figures,” Marceline scowled. “That I’d have a cure but it’s only for myself. Even my body is selfish.”

“Marcy –”

“No. Don’t even try. This –” she pointed to the plaque. “This right here is the reason why you and Finn and Jake can’t live in a safe place with other people. Because you must keep my secret. And it turns out I can’t even use that secret to help people. That’s so fucking _typical –”_

_“_Marceline_.”_ Bonnie took closed the distance between them, held her face and kissed her. She tasted salty tears on her lips. “Shush. I love you. And you know I like this better than any of the places we’ve lived in.”

“Because you get to boss everyone around?”

“Exactly.” She smiled against her lips and kissed her again. “You know how I like giving orders. I couldn’t possibly live under the military.”

“And you’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Bonnie ran her fingers through the length of Marceline’s hair. Of all the little luxuries they could afford, shampoo and hot water were fortunately among them. She moved her lips to Marceline’s neck, kissing over the scar of the first of several bites she’d taken from the zombies. “I was bossy long before you came along.”

Marceline pressed her nose to Bonnie’s scalp, running thumbs over her jaw. “And stubborn. It’s long past bedtime, you know. You need sleep.”

As if to prove her point, the lights flickered. Though the summer sun was more than enough to keep the power on during the day, they still had trouble saving that power for the night. She and Rainy were still working on better batteries and alternate sources of energy for winter.

“Mmh.” She bumped her head on Marceline’s shoulder. “But you just gave me coffee. I can’t sleep now.”

“We both know you’re as immune to coffee as I am to zombification.” Marceline snuck a hand under her chin, tilted it up and planted a kiss on her lips. “Now come. I can’t keep your side of the bed warm forever.”

Bonnie sighed, but relented. She turned the lights off, closed the door behind them and followed Marceline to bed.

* * *

“It’s adventure time!” Finn jumped on the back of the pickup truck, far too excited for someone about to face literal death. “I call shotgun!”

By shotgun he meant, of course, the literal shotgun stashed on the back of the car, which he happily loaded, then swung over his shoulder. Marceline remembered how long his hair used to grow, back when the world was still normal and they were just classmates on the Basic Spanish class the both of them took because they needed credits. The difference being, of course, that Marceline was already fluent in Spanish, while Finn honest to god didn’t know any words above _hola._

But those were simpler times. Now Finn and Jake both shaved their heads before going on a supply run, because they knew they couldn’t risk being grabbed by the hair. Marceline knew it was the sensible thing to do, but there were certain things which she couldn’t give up, lest she lose her sanity, and the right to style her hair as she saw fit was among them.

“You always get the shotgun!” Jake protested, ruffling under the canvas for a rifle. “I want the katana this time.”

They had exactly one katana, and the brothers argued over it every single time.

“No way. You had the katana last time!”

“I’ll trade the katana for the shotgun.” Jake pulled the sword out of their weapon stash, touching the edge, satisfied when he saw it was still sharp.

“You _know_ I’m bad at aiming! The person who aims bad should keep the shotgun!”

Marceline tuned their bickering out and turned to Bonnie. She had that face to her, the face she always wore when she was about to send them out. It seemed impassive, cold, perhaps even impatient, but Marceline knew better. “Hey, stranger.”

Bonnie managed a tense smile at her. Marceline closed the distance between them and planted a kiss on her lips. “Don’t give me that face. We’ve done this a thousand times before. We’ll be fine.”

Bonnie set her jaw and looked away. “This is always so stressful. I want to go with you, but…” She shrugged. “You know.”

Marceline knew. Bonnie could handle a gun just fine, but those excursions were ones in which the less people were present, the better. And they needed Bonnie and Rainy in the labs more than they needed them out there. “Yeah. Don’t worry. Just make sure you and Rain fix the playstation. I got the TV to work already, it’s the least you can do.”

Bonnie smiled. She wasn’t an engineer, just like Rain wasn’t a physician, but the two ended up sharing much of their work. Marceline suspected that was out of their mutual need for company more than anything. “No promises. I’ll move it up on the list of priorities, though. We’re still working on the microwave.”

“You’d better. Anything you want me to keep an eye for, other than a brand new zombie?”

“The usual. See if you can find any computers, phones, electronic devices we can scavenge for parts. Rain and I are trying to build a decent battery system. And be careful with other scavengers. They can be worse than zombies.”

“Yes, ma’am. Anything else?”

“More guns are always good, but the boys never leave one of those behind.” She made eye contact then, and her expression changed for a split second, from the mask of indifference to a much more vulnerable concern. “Be careful, Marcy. Get back to me in one piece.”

“I will,” She smiled and held Bonnie’s hand. “And you keep working on your cure. I know you’ll get there.”

Bonnie’s smile was discreet, but it still made her heart flutter. “Who knows. I have a promising lead with potassium iodide, gentian violet and voriconazole. Maybe it’ll work this time.”

“Whatever you say, nerd,” She leaned in. “Now give me my goodbye kiss.”

“Say please.” Her eyes twinkled when she said it.

“Please, oh princess scientist overlord, grant me the bliss of your affection.”

Bonnie laughed, a wonderful sound that made everything worth it. And then she kissed Marceline’s lips, fierce and demanding. “I mean it. If you die on me, I’ll kill you.”

_That doesn’t even make sense,_ she mused, and then Bonnie kissed her again, and all rational thought escaped her head.

* * *

It was one long drive from the rural campus to the nearest populated area – at least forty minutes on the road, in which Marceline was forced to listen to Finn and Jake’s endless repertoire of puns. They usually only took the pickup truck, but every once in a while, Bonnie needed a new zombie capture so she could test her things on it, and so they also took the police car, which they’d reinforced for that purpose.

It was also useful for whenever they lucked out and found stray farm animals, and they’d learned to prioritize the animals over the zombie captures since zombies were plenty and food was scarce. She was driving one car and Jake was driving the other, a walkie-talkie on each so they could communicate.

“Why did the zombie eat the archer?” Jake chirped, static behind his voice.

“I don’t know,” Finn vibrated on the seat next to her. “Why did he?”

“He wanted his bone and marrow!”

Marceline seriously considered, for the umpteenth time, the possibility of tossing Finn and the walkie-talkie through the window. She settled with a groan of distaste.

On her side, Finn giggled. “Oh, I got one. How does a zombie serve his country?”

“I don’t know. How does he?”

“In the Marine Corpse!!”

_Oh my god,_ she thought, and the boys burst out laughing again. “_Puta mierda_, Finn. You make me wish I wasn’t immune to the fungus.”

This had the two laughing harder, and Marceline couldn’t help but smile with them. “Okay, idiots, we’re here. You know the drill. Get in. Grab anything of interest for our respective brainiacs –” she stopped, looked at Finn, “ – and Finn’s forest girl.”

He blushed, much to Marceline’s delight. It wasn’t always that they took a new person into the community, considering just how dangerous people were, but Finn had a gift for finding good folk in the wilderness. He cleared his throat. “Yes. We grab Bonnie’s zombie on the way back?”

They always did, because it was far too inconvenient to carry a loud, aggressive zombie on their car while they raided for supplies. “Correct, Finnster. As always. Keep your guns at ready but avoid shooting them, et cetera. And wear your masks, non-immune plebs. Let’s go.”

They avoided going too far from one another, but spread apart for efficiency. Marceline kicked the door of a mostly intact drugstore open, gun in one hand and machete on the other. She went straight to the antibiotics aisle, tossing as many boxes as she could into a backpack. Bonnie had instructed her on what drugs to prioritize, and when she was done cleaning the shelves, she moved on to the painkillers and opioids.

They’d done hospital raids before and Bonnie had plenty equipment stored and ready at the campus, but she went through them a lot in her research and was always in need of restocking. Marceline moved to the next alley and tensed when she heard a groan. Holding her breath, she moved so that her back was to the wall and carefully peeked around the corner.

A couple zombies huddled in a corner there, their groans still human enough that she could tell they were Runners. It didn’t take much for her to understand what had happened: the scattered drugs on the floor, the still-open bag, the rotten pieces of staircase fallen on the ground.

Those had been scavengers, just like her, who were probably surprised by spores hidden in the walls. It was unusual for the fungus to spread like that, in places so close to the surface where light could reach.

_Stupid,_ she thought, carefully sliding her machete into her belt and adjusting the silencer on her pistol. _Stupid of them not to wear masks_.

She took careful aim and pulled the trigger twice, then twice more. The zombies’ heads exploded into a mess of blood, brains and spores that made her stomach turn. Without thinking too much about it, she ran up to where they were, grabbed the bag and jogged back to the pickup, tossing the things on the back.

Finn and Jake still hadn’t returned, and a twinge of worry squeezed in her chest. The brothers got distracted easy, and more often than not they were chasing something that would prove invaluable for them in the future, but going anywhere with them was still a source of endless stress.

“_Puta,_” she muttered under her breath, making her way to the building she’d seen the two enter. “I’m going to kill those two. I swear to god. _Pendejos_.”

She knew something was wrong when she heard the screams. And then Jake was there, dragging a bleeding Finn behind him, followed by what had to be a dozen zombies. Marceline didn’t hesitate. She took aim and fired several times without stopping. A few of the zombies fell down, but more immediately took their places.

By then, Jake had already reached her, and she slung one of Finn’s arms over her shoulder and helped the two back into the car.

“Drive, drive, drive!” she shouted at Jake, slamming the pickup door shut as he ran to the police car.

When the zombies reached her, she had already started the engine, and she slammed her foot in the speed pedal. The tires screamed and she was flung forward when she slammed a zombie with the roof of the car. She didn’t let go of the wheel, driving away as fast as she could.

Finn was pale next to her, barely conscious, his arm bleeding. From the corner of her eyes, she could see the distinctive shape of teeth on his skin.

_Fuck._

“Marcy,” he muttered, and he was sweating and crying. He opened the window, put his head outside and threw up, fingers shaking. “_Marcy_. It’s over for me, it’s over, I’m bit, Marcy you can’t let me turn, please –”

“Shut it,” she hissed. “It’s not over. We’ll find a way.”

“Marcy, _please_. You know that’s just not true. You know what happens now. I don’t – I can’t –”

“Shut up!” she snarled. A familiar broken farm showed up on the horizon and she knew they were into walkie-talkie range. She switched to the appropriate channel and pressed the button. “Bonnie, you hear me? We have an emergency. Over.”

A couple seconds later, the walkie-talkie crackled. “Marceline, I’m here. What happened? Over.”

She grit her teeth. “Finn’s bit. Right arm, just above the wrist. Over.”

It took Bonnie almost a full minute to reply. “Understood. Preparing to receive him. Over and out.”

* * *

“Propofol,” Bonnie commanded, and Rain pushed the milky liquid into Finn’s veins. She looked at the heart monitor, saw the expected drop in the heart rate. Next to her, Phoebe squeezed the ambu bag, inflating his lungs. “Slower, Phoebe.” She turned to Rain. “Fentanyl.”

This time, the liquid was clear like water. Bonnie prepared the laryngoscope and moved to stand behind Finn’s head. “Now rocuronium.”

She watched Rain do the injection and counted to sixty, then back to one. “Okay, move,” she grabbed the laryngoscope with her left hand. Phoebe paused her work, and Finn stopped breathing. She pushed the metal into his mouth, shoved his tongue aside, lifting his head so that she could look deep into his throat and see his vocal chords.

_Thank fuck,_ she thought, grabbing the tube and sliding it into Finn’s trachea, because she’d done that maybe ten times in her whole life. A moment later, the ventilator whirred into work, and she saw his lungs resume moving. She checked his oxygen saturation on the monitor – still above 90% - and his heartbeat – still above 50 – and finally allowed herself a deep, shaky breath.

“Okay,” she pulled off her gloves, tossed them in the trash bin and grabbed a new set of sterile ones. Her hands were shaking. “Okay, okay.”

She took a moment to inspect the wound on his arm and winced. It was deep and ugly. The tendons of the brachioradialis and flexor carpi radialis had been bitten clean off, together with a chunk of muscle. He was lucky in that the radial artery hadn’t been involved, missed by millimeters. She was going to have to amputate, there was no question about it – amputate, and hope they had been fast enough.

She had scalpels and a cautery and even a bone saw of the non-electric sort, all fruits of the multiple hospital raids she had gone in. Bonnie had prepared for a moment like this, but she wasn’t ready to do it. She wasn’t a goddamned surgeon, or a goddamned infectious diseases doctor. She had specialized in _endocrinology_. Her realm were thrice-cursed hormones.

She’d studied those procedures when the apocalypse happened, of course. Bonnibel had her bases covered, and she knew this day might come. But it was one thing to read it in books. Another to perform it, with an engineer and a rapper as her assistants.

“Okay,” she repeated, more to herself than to the others. “Okay, let’s do this.” She lifted her head, looked at Rain and Phoebe. “Scalpel,” she extended her hand.

Phoebe passed her the scalpel, and Bonnibel began cutting.

* * *

Bonnie was still in her bloodied scrubs when Marceline walked into the room. She made for a pathetic figure, sitting on the corner, counting her breathing, hair loose from her cap.

_At least I had the energy to remove the gloves,_ she thought, gratefully accepting when Marceline offered a hand to help her up. “I – fuck. I did my best, Marcy. I did my best and it’ll be a miracle if he lives and I –”

“Shh.” Marceline touched her index finger to Bonnie’s lips. There were deep rings under her eyes. “I know, Bon. Let’s get you to a shower.”

She would like to say she stayed up the whole night to check on Finn, but the reality was that she fell asleep as soon as she hit the sofa next to his bed. She woke up the next morning with the angry beeping of his monitors and felt her heart leap from her chest in panic –

And then relief. Finn was awake, if groggy, and he was groaning and angrily tugging at the straps they’d used to tie him on the bed. But his eyes lacked the orange glow of newly turned Runners and his face was scrunched up in a very Finn-like expression of utter indignation. “Hey, princess,” he muttered. “I can excuse cutting off my arm, but don’t you think tying me up to the bed is a bit much?”

She burst out laughing and crying at the same time, wrapping her arms tightly around his much larger frame and dampening his shirt with her tears. It was uncharacteristic of her to show this much emotion, she knew, but right then she was _exhausted_ and she did not care. “You’re a fucking idiot, Finn.”

“Can I raise my arm to agree?” He smiled, goofy as always. “Or, well, raise it to ask questions. I have a few. The most pressing one being, am I still infected?”

Bonnie pulled back and undid the straps on his torso, then on his arms, a twinge of dread on her chest. “I – I don’t know, Finn. I amputated it as fast as I could, and I – I’ve given you some drugs.” She nodded towards the EV fluid bag hooked up to his arm. “Voriconazole, piperacillin, tazobactam, potassium iodide. Your stump is dipped into gentian violet. I’m going to give you a dose of Amphotericin soon. The only reason I haven’t yet is because it might kill you to have too many of those at once.”

“Mathematical. So you basically stuffed me with everything you could get your hands on?”

“As much as I thought you kidneys could handle, yeah.” She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry, Finn.”

“When… when will I know?”

Bonnie pinched the bridge of her nose. “Usually you’d show symptoms within twenty-four hours, but the antifungals might delay that. I’d say… two days from now, if you still aren’t sick, then you’re good to go.”

He stared at the ceiling for a second, and Bonnie could see the glistening of tears on the corners of his eyes. “One last question, Bon.”

“Yes?”

“Did you fix the damn playstation? I kept telling Jake and Marcy that I could beat them on _Crash Team Racing_ with only one hand. Guess now is the time to prove it.”

* * *

Bonnie would say the second day of waiting was the worse one. On the first day she gave Finn his medication right after lunch, one milligram per kilo, pushing it as far as she possibly could without the proper blood tests. The classical ‘_shake and bake_’ came little over than an hour later, the whole package, complete with fever and chills and puking his guts out.

But on the second day, all they did was wait. Wait and count the hours and, she supposed, fix the playstation.

On the third day, Bonnie allowed herself to be cautiously optimistic.

On the fourth day, there was a distinct shift in everyone’s mood. Bonnie was still skeptical, but the seeds of hope were starting to sprout.

On the fifth day, Rainy started projecting a prosthetic arm for Finn.

And after a week had passed, not even Bonnie couldn’t stop the smile on her face every time she saw Finn walk between the surgery room and the kitchen, couldn’t help but laugh at his stupid jokes.

After two weeks, she suspended the antibiotics and the antifungals. She didn’t sleep that night, terrified that the infection would show up in full force in the morning. But it didn’t. And after a month had passed and Finn was back to playing soccer and running around the campus, she could no longer stop herself from accepting it: that her improvised combo of drugs and even more improvised surgery had been a success.

She was leaning against the window frame and watching him help Jake with the chickens when she heard the door open and Marceline walk in. She moved to Bonnie’s side without speaking, peeking over her shoulder to see what Bonnie was staring at.

“You’re a genius, you know,” Marceline commented, snorting when a chicken beat its wings and pecked a crouching Finn on the nose. “You did it. You stopped the Cordyceps. You’re a fucking genius, Bon.”

She sighed. “Hardly. I don’t know what did it. Could have been the amputation, or the drugs, or all of them. And Finn was a healthy and young man. Not everyone would survive a treatment that aggressive. It’s not as if I found a cure –”

“Blah, blah, blah.” Marceline half smiled at her. “Right, Brainiac. I don’t care. What I care is that my friend is right there, alive and well. And that’s thanks to you.”

“_Hardly_,” she insisted. “You were the one who brought him back, and Phoebe and Rain helped on the surgery, and honestly, without your blood samples I would never even know what medications to try –”

“Dear god, can’t you take a compliment?”

“I shouldn’t,” Bonnie grinned. “My ego is large enough without adding ‘savior of humanity’ to it.”

“Can’t argue against that,” Marceline laughed, and looped an arm around her waist. “What are you going to do with your findings?”

Bonnie considered it. “Nothing, for now. There’s a lot I need to study still. Perfect my drug mixture at least. It’s hard to work when all I have are in-vitro models, ants and actual zombies, but I’ll make do. Once it’s ready, though, well. I might share it with the world.”

“Might?”

Bonnie shrugged. “You know how people are. They might just storm the place thinking I hold some magic cure when in reality I have, I don’t know, something with maybe twenty per cent efficacy in preventing new cases when applied within twenty-four hours of contact.”

“That’s awfully specific.”

“Of course. That’s how science should be. Anything else is suspicious to say the least.” She shook her head and leaned back against Marceline’s warmth. “I don’t think I’d risk it. I wouldn’t risk… this. You. I’d risk you even less, if I could.”

“We’ve been doing less and less supply runs, anyway. We used to need them every other week. Nowadays you barely send us once a semester. I’m starting to feel cooped up already.”

Bonnie smiled. “We’re very close to self-sufficiency, and far enough from civilization to go mostly unbothered. Soon enough we’ll only need those runs for, I don’t know. Fancy hair spray.” She elbowed Marceline on the ribs. “For the princesses among us.”

“If this thing is a monarchy, I’m at least a queen,” Marceline poked her back, then wrapped an arm around her shoulder and planted a kiss on her neck. “I love you, Bon. That’s the one good thing out of the apocalypse, eh? I would never have grown the balls to approach you if not to save you from a zombie.”

“_Excuse me_,” Bonnie turned to her, bumping her nose against Marceline’s jaw. “If I recall correctly, it was you with a twisted ankle running from a hundred clickers, and me in a car going your way.”

“Details, details,” Marceline dipped her head for a kiss.

Bonnie obliged, smiling when their lips met. “I love you, too. I –”

There was a crash and the two broke apart, looking down the window to see Finn with one foot stuck on a bucket, kicking, grain spilled all over his clothes while Jake desperately tried to pull the chickens away from him.

Bonnie and Marceline stared at each other for a full second without blinking.

And then they burst out laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- this was mostly an experiment in mixing the AT characters and the TLOU universe  
\- it was interesting because they are two things with very distinct vibes so it was hard to try and carry the essence of the characters into the different setting  
\- you guys came _this_ close to a graphic description of an amputation but in the end I was merciful with the gore  
\- there isn't much of a plot to this story, it's just "look at these charaters on that world and also that was how finn lost his arm"; basically snapshots of their lives so I could toy with how they would adapt to the AU  
\- I am hyped for TLOU2 but I don't own a PS4 . fortunately for me my little brother owns a PS4, which means that I will own a PS4 when the game comes out  
\- thanks everyone for reading and for the support! <3


	2. On how the girls met

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess I'm writing this huh

Like most people in the world, Bonnie had been painfully unprepared for the event of a zombie apocalypse. Only two things set her apart, two things that proved vital to her survival.

The first was the fact that she had always been a whirlwind of extroversion, a friendly face in every crowd. Everywhere she went, she made friends. She checked in on people and in return, people checked in on her.

Bonnie knew something was horribly wrong when Medscape started pinging her news about Cordyceps five times a day. She was an endocrinologist and registered as such, but right there at the end, on the last days before civilization fell, that didn’t really matter. The fungus had become the sole focus of scientists of every area in every point of the globe.

Even then Bonnie wouldn’t have been safe, but she had friends who worked in emergency and friends who worked in epidemics and infectious diseases. And so three nights before things went to hell, she got a call. She was in the shower when her phone rung, and she would have let it rung, but the name on the screen caught her attention.

“Hey, Doctor Princess,” she answered, still dripping, reaching out for the towel. “Long time since our last chat. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Bonnie,” the voice on the phone replied, sounding distant and tired. “Still with the nicknames. Come on now. It’s been what, four years?”

“Five. Don’t judge me. I’m clinging to the last shreds of my youth.” She struggled to wrap the towel around her body with one hand, settling with covering her waist. “We should meet and catch up, Penny. I have all sorts of uncomfortable questions to ask you. When are you getting married? You got kids yet?”

Penny chuckled, and Bonnie smiled at herself for managing to draw that out. “We should. I don’t know if we’ll have a chance for that anytime soon, though. Things have been… hectic.”

“Yeah, damn, what’s up with _that_?” she asked the question that had been on everyone’s minds. “What’s the talk among you infectious disease folks?”

“That’s why I’m calling. It ain’t looking good, Bon,” Penny’s tone went back to an uncharacteristic seriousness. “It ain’t looking good at all.”

Bonnie leaned her back against the wooden door, shivering at the cold touch against her still hot skin. “How bad are we talking about here?”

“It’s a mixed transmission disease – you can get it from people and from the environment. So it’s downright uncontrollable. Impossible to stop. Bon, we threw the data on SPSS. It curved catastrophic. We’ll be reaching pandemic levels soon, and by that I mean days. Not even weeks. Days.”

The magnitude of what she was being told slowly creeped up inside her. Bonnie had been to epidemic meetings before. She knew how those things worked, how behind every newspaper being told “there is no reason to panic”, there was a group of doctors doing exactly that.

“Penn,” she stared at herself on the mirror and had a vertiginous sensation of leaving her own body. “Is this a Zika-Virus situation?”

She still worked in general practice when the Zika outbreak hit, and she remembered going with Penny to the extraordinary health meeting, remembered sitting on the steps of a stair in a crowded room with hundreds of doctors and the single professor who had first isolated the virus.

Hands would shoot up, questions raining down in the dozens. And the man, the single person in the world who knew the most about the virus, would say the most chilling thing a doctor could say, something reserved exclusively for the years of other doctors, never to be uttered in front of the ill.

_“I don’t know.”_

“No, Bon,” Penny’s voice snapped her back into reality. “This is so much worse.”

ZIKV had sorted itself out, in the end. Past the initial panic of microcephaly and Guillain-Barré, it turned out to be a self-limited, harmless infection as long as one didn’t catch it while pregnant.

ZIKV had never curved catastrophic.

“Fuck,” She whispered, feeling nauseous. She was a skeptical woman, inclined to question things, particularly things people made a ruckus about. But she trusted Penny. “Penn, what the fuck. Ampho-B? Vorico? Nystatin? Nothing killing this thing?”

“It’s… complicated. It’s got intermediate sensitivity to Vorico and Ampho in vitro, but when it comes down to actual patients, the effects are worthless. We think it’s doing something to CYP450, mimicking or stimulating it, dunno. Same with Ampho, the clearance is too high, too fast. Thing goes straight for the liver and kidneys. As if it knew.”

“That’s –“ she blinked. “It’s insane. It doesn’t make sense. Or, well, it makes too much sense. Is this _natural?_”

Penny hesitated. “Might be. Might be one of those lab CRISPR babies. Who the fuck knows. Doesn’t matter at this point. Bon, you need to leave the city. Take some vacations, I don’t know. Things will get really bad, really soon. I – they’re talking about quarantines. You have a day, two at most. Pack your things up.”

“I –“ her mind raced. “I have somewhere to go. My uncle’s cabin. It’s on the lake, pretty far out from… well, everything. Should be safe. Penn, if you need a place to go –“

“Thank you,” Penny exhaled into the speaker, bringing out crackling noises. “But no. I – they need me here. They need everyone on this. We’re locking ourselves up on our labs, we’ve stockpiled resources. I – we’ll get through this, Bon. Just wanted to give you the heads up.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, stomach churning. “Take care, Penn. Keep in touch, give me updates. My thing are hormones, but who knows. Maybe I can give you some insight on your antigen stuff.”

“You were always a brainiac, I don’t doubt you could,” Penny replied. “I’ll let you know how things are. Take care, you too.”

“See you later,” she said, but the phone had already faded into silence.

Bonnie never heard from Penny again. She sent a quick text to her secretary, telling her to unappoint the patients for the next week, messaged a few select friends of choice, warning them, then started packing.

* * *

Bonnie’s second saving grace, it turned out, was that as unprepared as she was for the apocalypse, she was also an unquestionable genius. It was an eight-hour drive to the cabin which she couldn’t help but think of as her uncle’s, even though she had been its sole owner for years. The cabin and the little farm around it, complete with a lake, was the sole inheritance she had from the people who’d raised her.

Bonnie never met her father, long lost into the world months before she was even born. Her aunt had been a good person to take her in at age seven when her mother passed from unfortunate and unexpected cancer. Her uncle, on the other hand, was never a good man, though she’d still mourned his loss half a dozen years in the past. He’d been drunk driving, as he often did, and his irresponsibility claimed more than his life.

Bonnie wasn’t one to visit the place much, though she did pay someone to keep the place in order. When she arrived, the place was more than habitable, if a bit dusty. The closest town was a two-hour drive and she visited it the next day, stuffed as many things as she could into her car.

She left early in the morning and did two runs, one for food, one for general supplies; on the next morning, she went back for fuel and medicine. It was all she could do – the city was quarantined a mere hours after she’d left.

On the third day, she bought chickens from the nearby farmers. She didn’t think she’d have the resource to care for cows, but she had enough to sustain a chicken and a rooster.

By day five, Bonnie had set up a rainwater collection and filtering system.

On the seventh day, the TV announced that the cities were being evacuated for bombing. By then, Bonnie had already set up a small garden with potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, pumpkins and beetroots. She didn’t know a lot about caring for plants, but she did as much research as she could with her phone internet before it went out.

On the tenth day, she woke at night with the deafening noise of bombs falling on the city, and even as far as she was, she could still see the fires. That night, she sat down her porch and alternated between sobbing and vomiting until she was too tired to stay up.

She started herself on antidepressants on the very next day – a risky move, she knew, to make herself dependent on drugs that would grow increasingly hard to acquire. But she had enough for five, almost six months, and riskier still were the thoughts that began lurking in her head. She tried to reinforce the farm, protect it against both the infected and possible raiders, but most her safety still relied on isolation and the shotgun her uncle kept over the fireplace.

Bonnie knew idle hands – and in her case, an idle mind – were the devil’s workshop, but there was only so much she could do before the solitude began driving her a little crazy. She was a people person, had always been, and she knew as unwise as it was, she had social needs that had to be met as much as hunger or thirst.

And so almost three months after the apocalypse started, Bonnie hopped into her car and set off – not because she needed resources, but because she needed someone to talk to. She had to find a group – not _too_ many people, she’d read enough Lord of The Flies knockoffs to know how bad that could go – but some people. By then her phone signal was long dead, turning the device into little over an extra flashlight.

She was on the outskirts of the nearest town when she met Marceline, or rather, when Marceline dragged a whole horde of infected into her path. She heard the gunshot first, seemingly far way. It made her frown, and she grabbed the shotgun on the passenger’s seat and placed it on her lap.

The second shot was much closer. When she squinted, in the distance, she was met with the most bizarre sight she’d ever seen – a woman on a bike, one hand on the handle, the other on a glock, blindly shooting over her shoulder as at least thirty zombies chased her. She kept her distance, barely, but she was going downhill and Bonnie knew that was bound to change soon.

And then, unexpectedly, a man jumped from the tall vegetation on the side of the road. The woman didn’t have enough time to steer away from him and the two crashed. She was sent flying, hitting the asphalt with her shoulder. Bonnie saw her turn around and shoot the zombie, a precise bullet through the head.

But then she stood and when she walked, she had a limp. The zombies were closing in on her.

Bonnie took a calculated risk and slammed her foot on the speed pedal, unlocking the doors with one hand as she drove. The woman saw her, eyes widening, expression turning into the face of someone who’d witnessed a miracle.

“Hop on, hop on, hop on!!” She slammed the brakes when she got close enough. The woman opened the door and jumped inside the car, but a zombie grabbed her leg. She turned around and shot. Bonnie didn’t wait to see whether it had hit – she revved up the car as fast as she could.

When she tried to turn around, she heard the bump of bodies and the scratch of nails against metal and winced. The woman grabbed the shotgun from her lap, pointed it to the rear of the car and shot. Glass rained down and hit her skin, opening cuts on her arm. The sound was loud enough to be disorienting, making her ears ring.

“Fuck, go, go, GO!”

It was a fortunate thing that Bonnie had good instincts. She hit the pedal and the car shot forward, sending zombies flying around the front. Her heart drummed faster than she’d ever experienced in her life. Her hands shook so much she had trouble steering.

“Holy FUCK,” the woman was still turned to the back, shotgun in hands. “Holy shit. Holy _shit_. You are a lifesaver. Literally. Dear hot stranger, you are an angel. I owe you my life. Aaah, fuck.” She panted, her voice shaky. “Fuck, I thought that was it for me.”

“What were you even doing out there by yourself?” Bonnie couldn’t help but be curious, even though it was dampened by the figure of zombies on her rear mirror. “Fuck, they’re fast.”

“At this speed, you’ll lose them in twenty or so. Trust me. Been there, done that.” She seemed confident enough that she turned around, content to leave the zombies unwatched. “As for your question, same thing you were doing, I presume. Scavenging for supplies. Sorry for ruining your supply run, by the way. I hope you got what you were out here for.”

_Right,_ Bonnie thought, unwilling to tell her she’d been scavenging for people. “It’s okay. With that many infected on your tail, I assume the town is overrun?”

“Damn right it is. The fungus is all over. You have no idea how glad I am to see you, I’ve been biking from days, all the way from the city. I’m Marceline, by the way,” She turned to Bonnie with a smile. “I’d shake your hand, except, you know. Keep driving.”

“Bonnie,” She offered a smile in return, even though the news Marceline brought left her with a heavy heart. “I was in my vacation home when it all started,” she half-lied, “But it’s been almost a month with no TV or phone signal. How are things out there?”

“It’s hell. Civilization as we knew it is completely gone.” Marceline rolled down the car window. The wind was pleasantly cool. “They’ve bombed the city to try and stall the infection, but it didn’t work for long. People have been moved into military compounds ruled with an iron fist. Everyone else joined militias and they just raid and shoot each other for scraps of food.”

“Shit. I have friends out there.”

“I’m sorry,” Marceline touched her shoulder, her voice pained. “I don’t know how this happened. It’s a mess.”

Bonnie felt herself tear up and forced the emotions down her throat. She looked into the rear view mirror. “You were right. I think we lost them.”

“They’re attracted to noise, so be careful with driving. Engine is a Runner magnet.” Marceline turned around to look at the window, satisfied when she saw no zombies. “That’s what we call them. Runners. And the little fucker hiding in the bush, waiting for me? That’s a Stalker. Those are mean little creatures. Sneaky.”

“There are different kinds?”

“Them scientists say it’s all just different stages of infection. Runners turn into Stalkers. Stalkers turn into… well, so far nothing, but give the fungus long enough and who knows what manners of horrors will show up.”

“Long enough,” Bonnie echoed, and the hopelessness in those words hit her hard.

“Sorry,” Marcy seemed to pick up on her mood change. “I know it’s a lot to take in. I wish I didn’t have to bring you bad news. Oh, is that your place?”

Bonnie nodded, driving the car into the dirt road that led up to the cabin. The doors and windows had been boarded up and she’d moved furniture to block all but the main entrance, but nothing save for a wooden fence separated the farm grounds from the rest of the world, and Bonnie caught herself checking the rear mirror one last time.

“You should probably invest on better fences, if you plan to stay here,” Marceline commented as the two stepped out of the car. “I – I don’t mean to meddle.”

“That’s all right. Thanks for the tip.” Bonnie unlocked the door and the two walked in. There was still electricity from the generator, but she was saving it mostly for the meats in the fridge, so she lit a candle and set it on the table. “It’s not a very big place. There’s only one room, but you can sleep on the sofa. The shower is working and since the place has solar heating, you get hot water.”

“Oh my god,” Marceline whispered, “Hot water. I could kiss you right now.” She pulled her backpack from her shoulders and set it on the floor. “Usually I’d guard my things with my life, but the offer of hot water is too tempting. I would trade all my things for a shower. Is it rude if I immediately invade your bathroom?”

Bonnie snorted. “Go ahead. You’re taller than me, but I think I have some clothes that would fit. Take your time, too. The water comes from the massive lake nearby. I don’t think we’ll run out anytime soon.”

She watched Marceline go up the stairs, then selected a few clothes from her closet and placed them near the bathroom door. When Marceline came out, almost half an hour later, Bonnie had cooked a meal out of rice, canned beans, French fries and a steak for each.

Part of her relished showing off her infrastructure, but mostly she just enjoyed the look on Marceline’s face at the little luxuries she could afford.

Marceline ravaged the food in a way that made Bonnie think she hadn’t eaten in days. Judging by the way her eyes were sunken and her cheekbones were showing, Bonnie presumed that might have been the case.

_She’s also incredibly good looking, now that she’s clean and civil._

Bonnie repressed the stray thought. “How do you like the food?”

“Fries,” Marceline muttered, her mouth full. “Holy shit. You are a goddess on this earth. This is fantastic. A pretty girl saves me and offers me a hot shower and a real meal. I feel like I’ve died and been misplaced into heaven.”

She smirked, amused at the choice of words. Something else caught her eye then. “You want me to take a look at that arm of yours? Cut looks nasty.”

“I think that was the bike. Thank fuck that I’ve had my tetanus shot.”

Bonnie stood and went to the cabinet where she kept the medical supplies. She came back with a pill and the material to make the stitches on top of a metal tray. The cut was almost the length of her palm, fortunately not too deep. “Are you allergic to any medication? Done any sort of surgery before?”

“Not allergic to anything that I know of. And, uh. Had my appendix removed when I was little.”

She put on a pair of gloves, grabbed a needle and sucked lidocaine into it, tapping it with her finger until the liquid was clear from air bubbles. “Yeah. Here, take it. It’s Ibuprofen.”

Marceline obeyed without questioning. Bonnie grabbed the flask of chlorhexidine and squeezed it over the cut, then wiped it clean with some gauze. “_Puta, _that hurts.”

“It’s antiseptic,” She explained, then picked up the needle. “Don’t worry. I’ll anesthetize you. Won’t feel a thing.”

“I hate needles,” Marceline mumbled, looking away. Bonnie smirked. She made quick work of the anesthetic, squeezing it into key spots until the liquid made lumps under her skin. Then she mounted the needle on the needle-holder and took a pair of tweezers. “How many stitches am I getting?”

“Mmh.” She stared at the cut. “Eight, maybe ten.” Holding the tweezers with her left hand, she used them to hold the flap of skin on one side of the cut, then grabbed the needle-holder.

“You seem to know what you’re doing. You some kinda doc?”

Bonnie used the tweezers to put tension on the skin and stretch it, then pressed the tip of the needle against it and made a circular motion with her wrist. The needle went through, tip appearing on the other side of the flap. “Yeah. Used to be, before this all went down.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Marceline grinned. “The gods have truly smiled upon me today.”

“Mmh?” Bonnie pinched the flap of skin on the opposite side, stretched it and punctured it. It bled when the needle went through, and she wiped it clean with gauze.

“Come on,” Marceline explained, looking everywhere but her arm. “It’s the apocalypse. Doctors and Engineers are worth their weight in gold. Except, you know. Gold ain’t worth shit right now. So you’re worth more.”

Bonnie scoffed. She pulled on the needle, watched the black nylon string attached to it run through Marceline’s skin. She kept pulling until only a small length remained near the first puncture. “You’re thinking about surgeons and emergency doctors. I’m an endocrinologist.”

“You’re stitching me up just fine.”

“This is basic stuff.” She shrugged. She released the needle from the needle-holder and carefully held it in her left hand, then spun the string twice around the needle-holder and used the tool to pinch the tip of the string. When she pulled the two ends, a surgical knot seamlessly formed, bringing the edges of the cut together. “Besides, I worked for a while with general practice.”

“Meaning you know how to treat shit like pneumonia and infected wounds?”

“Every doctor has some knowledge about that,” She looped the string around the needle-holder once, then pulled the ends apart. She repeated that one more time. “But I wouldn’t know how to open you up and take out your appendix, for instance.”

“Then thank the gods that I don’t have that anymore.” Marceline risked a peek at her arm and her face immediately paled. Bonnie bit back a snort. “Wouldn’t you do it, if there was no other way?”

“I would.” Bonnie pulled the needle-holder, tip of the string still between its pincers, tensioning the string. She cut the string close to the skin, mounted the needle back on the holder and started the next stitch a couple centimeters above from the first. “The victim would likely die. All things considered, maybe I should start studying surgery. Not my area of choice, but well. Apocalypse.”

“You can learn that in a book? I figured surgery was the kind of thing you’d need hands-on experience.”

Bonnie smirked. “It’s fifty-fifty. The victim would still likely die, but I’d know why at least. Maybe after the twentieth attempt or so, someone might live.”

Marceline drummed her non-immobilized fingers against the sofa. “That ain’t the most important, though. It’s the simple stuff. The pneumonias and gangrenes. That’s what’s killing people out there. Heck, this cut might have killed me.”

“You’re not out of the woods yet,” Bonnie joked, moving on to the third stick. “I can still mess up my stitching and kill you.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Marceline winked. Her eyes scanned the room. “Hey, is that a guitar?”

The skin flap she was working with had ragged edges, and she carefully trimmed them with the scissors. “Yeah. You play?”

“I do. I’m a music and IT double major. Completely useless in the event of apocalypse.”

Bonnie snorted. The fourth and fifth stitches went through seamlessly. “To be fair, no one was preparing for this.”

“You were, apparently,” Marceline pointed out, leaving the question implicit. “Um. Sorry. I shouldn’t pry. You’ve been nothing but kind to me.”

“It’s okay,” Bonnie pressed the needle against Marceline’s skin for the last couple stitches, but she flinched. Reaching to the tray, she took the anesthetic and reapplied it. “I got a couple days’ head start. A friend told me things were about to get bad and I took her word for it.”

Perhaps it was her desperate need for human interaction, but Bonnie found it easy to open up to Marceline. She finished the sutures and put the tools down, then wiped the blood from the skin with a gauze.

“I’d be envious, but if anyone had told me this would happen, I wouldn’t have believed them. So kudos to you for the leap of faith.”

Bonnie cut a couple strings of micropore tape and covered the cut with it, placing gauze under the sticky bit so that it didn’t directly adhere to the wounds. “Looking good. Should take those stitches out in ten days, maybe seven.”

Bonnie had been looking down, putting her tools away. When she raised her head, she found Marceline looking at her with an intense, piercing gaze. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied, and found herself meaning it in more ways than one. “Hey, do you… do you have any plans? Somewhere or someone you were trying to reach?”

“I need some rest,” Marceline admitted, staring at the sofa in a wistful way. “I hope you don’t mind. I’ll be off your hair in the morning, I promise. I’m not one of those bandits, here to take your things. And I don’t want to overextend my welcome.”

“Stay,” Bonnie replied on impulse, knowing it was reckless. She barely knew the woman. And yet. If she had to spend another month by her lonesome, she’d end up doing dangerous impulsive things. And Marceline seemed capable enough. “There’s space for you. And the place needs work. I can’t do it all by myself.”

“You mean stay here. With you?”

“Think about it,” Bonnie insisted. “You don’t have to reply right away. I know it’s the middle of nowhere. But there’s hot water and real food that will last a while. I won’t keep you,” she added for good measure. “You can go if you want to. If you have something to do. But if you don’t, well.” She arched an eyebrow. “Maybe we can even take turns in who gets the bed.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” Marceline grinned and it reached all the way to her eyes, making their corners crinkle. It was the most beautiful thing Bonnie had seen in a long while. “The hot water is too tempting. All right, princess,” she extended her hand. “Thank you for the offer. I’ll work my butt off. You won’t regret it. I’ll even serenade you with the guitar, if you want it.”

Bonnie took her hand and shook it, an electric feeling shooting up her arm when their fingers touched. “I’d like that, I think. Been a while since I listened to any music.”

“The horror!” Marceline laughed. “I’ll have to remedy that. You got yourself a deal.”

“Deal,” she repeated, and felt lighter than she had in a long while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I took way more of a liking to this than I should have
> 
> \- epidemiological meetings on emergent diseases are an absolute joy to attend, cause it's just a bunch of doctors who don't know shit about what's going on listening to a doctor who doesn't also know shit and made a powerpoint which consists of three slides called "what we know" and twenty called "what we don't know"
> 
> meanwhile reporters wait outside. someone goes out and says "yeah we're discussing the thing. no reason for panic!"
> 
> inside the auditorium, we panic
> 
> \- I saved y'all from a full HD verbatim of amputation but this time you had to read through someone getting stitched
> 
> which admittedly is nowhere near as hardcore
> 
> \- you can pry extrovert bonnie from my cold dead hands
> 
> \- having fun with this AU tbh


End file.
